"businesses are beginning to notice that their middle-class customers have disappeared.

The consumer market is beginning to look like a sandwich without meat in the middle--there are enough wealthy customers to keep the luxury market humming along, and a growing demand for cheap no-name and other bargain products."

Got it, we should do redistribution schemes to prevent the economic collapse from inequality even though no country has ever collapsed from inequality and almost every country who's tried redistribution has.

Sure that plan only killed 85 million in the last 100 years, but they just didn't have the righ TOP MEN!

Got it, we should do redistribution schemes to prevent the economic collapse from inequality even though no country has ever collapsed from inequality and almost every country who's tried redistribution has.

Sure that plan only killed 85 million in the last 100 years, but they just didn't have the righ TOP MEN!

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"No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out.

Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.” We think we’re immune to the same forces that started the Arab Spring—or the French and Russian revolutions, for that matter."

Got it, we should do redistribution schemes to prevent the economic collapse from inequality even though no country has ever collapsed from inequality and almost every country who's tried redistribution has.

Sure that plan only killed 85 million in the last 100 years, but they just didn't have the righ TOP MEN!

larger corporations producing overseas ... we need to take drastic steps to get manufacturing back into the country ... that will be a great start and those manufacturing plants revitalize towns and offer employment from blue collar to white collar. Can't take money from the rich but we can get them to invest more of it here.

BUFFETT: ...but I just — I've heard the double taxation article — argument a lot and actually I have — I have Governor Romney's tax returns here as well as my own tax returns. And it's kind of interesting. Here is, for example, in 2004 I had 46 million of capital gains. And, Becky, you can put up the last page of that return and you'll see on that return that millions and millions of dollars to capital gains and a few thousand of that was doubly taxed. I made a lot of that, millions and millions of dollars, from profits and Treasury inflation-protected bonds. There's no double taxation there. I made some of it from real estate investment trusts. There's no double taxation there.

"So we can no longer rely on national accounts to determine national power. Rather, we have to investigate these corporations themselves to encompass their transnational operations — for which national accounts (conceived in the 1920s) are wholly inadequate. Once we analyze the world’s top transnationals, a startling picture of economic power emerges. For one thing, national accounts seriously underestimate American power, and seriously overestimate Chinese power."

BUFFETT: ...but I just — I've heard the double taxation article — argument a lot and actually I have — I have Governor Romney's tax returns here as well as my own tax returns. And it's kind of interesting. Here is, for example, in 2004 I had 46 million of capital gains. And, Becky, you can put up the last page of that return and you'll see on that return that millions and millions of dollars to capital gains and a few thousand of that was doubly taxed. I made a lot of that, millions and millions of dollars, from profits and Treasury inflation-protected bonds. There's no double taxation there. I made some of it from real estate investment trusts. There's no double taxation there.

If Warren Buffett wants to pay more in taxes, he is perfectly free to do so.

I can't help but notice that Warren Buffett has signed "The Giving Pledge" for which I feel he should be commended. Of course, by giving money to charity instead of the government, he is admitting that government does not make for the best, most efficient use of funds.[/QUOTE]

larger corporations producing overseas ... we need to take drastic steps to get manufacturing back into the country ... that will be a great start and those manufacturing plants revitalize towns and offer employment from blue collar to white collar. Can't take money from the rich but we can get them to invest more of it here.

If Warren Buffett wants to pay more in taxes, he is perfectly free to do so.

I can't help but notice that Warren Buffett has signed "The Giving Pledge" for which I feel he should be commended. Of course, by giving money to charity instead of the government, he is admitting that government does not make for the best, most efficient use of funds.

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[/QUOTE]

i agree that the government is often not efficient enough....and some things charities do better......but many things exist that only the government is big enough to do

It's why I always hop on the political funding coming from Wall Street ...
these are the people more than happy to invest in sweat shops in 3rd world countries.
Which in turn hurts our country from a competitive standpoint.
Republican and Democrats ... it's the one thing they have in common ... corrupted thru Wall Street.

Obama promised to change this and hasn't.
Romney promised to change it also ... probably would have done as Obama has.

they prefer to print money from thin air to pacify the people who cannot become producers.

“[T]heir own fortunes aren’t tied to those of the nation the way they once were. In the postwar years, American companies depended largely on American consumers. Globalization has changed that—foreign sales account for almost half the revenue of the S&P 500—as has the rise of financial services (where the most important clients are the wealthy and other corporations). The well-being of the American middle class just doesn’t matter as much to companies’ bottom lines. …

Buffett's a fraud. Maneuvered one of his billion dollar transactions in a manner to avoid paying CG taxes. Another do as I say, not as I do fraud.

The growing inequality is thanks to the fed and the government. In order to feed the pig, the working class get squeezed by way of taxes, fees, fines, etc. In order to maintain an artificial bubble, the fed pumps and prints money, manipulates the interest rate, and does everything it can to render our currency worthless. In doing so it props up the market of Wall St, and it's 1%'ers. Since they have the money to invest, and the policies to enrich investors, they do what the math adds up to, and that's get rich(er). The powers that be enjoy the divide, because it allows them to get rich themselves, get big donors, and build the divide that class warfare brings. Had we only allowed for a more natural correction, we wouldn't have as large a disparity between rich and poor, as we do today. Remember, the rich will always get richer, and the divide will always grow. It's simple mathematics. The key is to ensure that our middle class stays vibrant and strong. When you print money, expand government, allow an invasion of illiterates, create policies that benefit those outside the middle class, print money, weaken our currency, inflate the price of food and energy, etc. you only serve to hurt working people, and end up with what we have today.

"No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out.u

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Not a very meaningful statement when no society has ever been as wealthy as ours. You can add no society which has as many cars as ours has ever survived, no society that uses this much energy, no society that has as many obese poor people. We live in the wealthiest country in the wealthiest time in history. Since you cannot make less than zero, but some people will always make zero, and since the wealthy of today are wealthier than 10, 20, 50, 100, or 200 years ago the distance between the two points will continue to grow unless the economy shrinks- which is what redistribution causes.

The poor are richer today, as are the middle class, which is completely explainable and expected under a growing economy as the median income also gets further from both points.

You're argument is that it's not inequality itself, but some inevitable childishness and jealousy that will bring down the country. Let's try this excuse on something else. We need to get rid of the 1st amendment, not because free speech is a problem itself, but because it makes some terrorists so angry the pitchforks and suicide vests come out. Why aren't you calling for that prescription, it's the same logic?